It’s been Steam Next Fest this week, leading to a big jumble of upcoming demos alongside modern games and golden oldies in our gaming this week. For my own part, I’ve had previews of the pinball shooter Appulse, raccoon raiding of Dumpster Gang, and should write up about There’s No Ghosts at The Grand today or tomorrow – all demos you can check out now. I also dipped a toe into Gray Zone Warfare for the first time, and have been puzzling my way through We Were Here Tomorrow with my better half – a review of that sometime soon!
Dom asked the question in our Slack, and then immediately answered it for himself. He’s been playing the original Battlefront 2 on Xbox with his son and having a great time with it. He then returned to Burnout Revenge, while he was in the mid-2000s, and marvelled at the 41 song tack list of EA Trax.
Wrapping up all woolly and warm for the season, Aran’s continued with Cult of the Lamb and beaten the end boss. He’s now wrapping up some endgame stuff before he starts on the Woolhaven DLC. Meanwhile in Old World – which is essentially Civ that sticks in ancient history – he’s been growing his Persian Empire, dealing with family strife – “Cyrus has died and his nephew has taken the throne. The expansion continues but I don’t have the military to take on Rome… yet.”
Gamoc has been playing Curse of Resthaven and Way of the Hunter 2 for review, and continuing to enjoy his heavily modded version of Starfield. He also wanted to share some dismay at the state of EA right now, “watching as some of the worst companies in the world, who nevertheless own some of the best franchises in the world, get bought up by somehow even worse companies who then cut the throats of all the IP they owned because doing something with it would cost money. Jared Kushner, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, and everyone linked to them can sod off.”
Yeah. Fair.
It was much lighter fare for Jason, who’s been playing a Zelda-inspired twinstick shooter called Minishoot Adventures, while Jim has enjoyed a week in Ezo lpaying through the Echoes of Sekigahara DLC for Ghost of Yotei – “The new region and story slot nicely in the base game, and the Most Wanted mode has allowed me to indulge in some challenging combats encounters with a nice roguelike twist. Having only dabbled with it a little at launch, I picked up the Legends online co-op mode which is a fun free offering, though I don’t think I have the patience for grindy progression.”
Tuffcub started playing TLOU2, but then remembered that he really hated it and stopped, so has instead been startling old ladies on the Tube who dare to look over his shoulder at what he’s playing on his phone. That’s because it’s XXL Woofia, which “seems to be a turn based RPG featuring very beefy men and even beefier anthropomorphised furries, with dating, and very suggestive mini games.
Steve’s caught the lurgy this week, and joined that with a batch of horror games from Steam Next Fest, while Miguel joined me for the silly raccoon game, played am anime action SCP shooter called Anomalith, a pinch of Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave, and jumped into Valheim for the first time.
And finally Nic B has been working through a bunch of mobile games he keeps getting targeted for on social media. “Spent the past week playing two mechanically identical merge games from two different companies to see if they’re actually any good. They’re… fine… but obviously unlike the ads that you see that promise mechanics that simply don’t exist. Others I’ve tried simply descend into flavourless Alliance games, where everything is run by bots. Short review: If there’s a needle in this haystack, I haven’t found it yet.”
And that’s us. What have you been playing this week?
TSBonyman
I’m really enjoying Enshrouded, beat the first boss and unlocked the first spire but feel like i’ve barely explored the first area yet. This game has some brilliant features – i found myself wishing the day cycle was longer – well, there’s a setting for that!